Ex-Netzah Yehuda soldier tells CNN he saw ‘collective punishment’ against Palestinians in West Bank

A whistleblower who previously served in the IDF’s Netzah Yehuda battalion, which has been at the center of several human rights controversies in the past, tells CNN that he witnessed “collective punishment” by the military against Palestinians in the West Bank.

“There were some kids throwing rocks in a small village, that normally isn’t a big deal. But the company commander decided, let’s throw them a party. So they took the emergency response team and 20 soldiers. They walked door to door, throwing flashbangs and gas grenades into people’s homes as a punishment for the kids throwing rocks,” the unnamed former soldier tells CNN.

The report also names four former commanders in the unit involved in alleged human rights abuses — Lt. Col. Nitai Okashi, Lt. Col. Uri Levy and Lt. Col. Shlomo Shiran — who have now been promoted to senior positions in the military, with some currently operating in the Gaza Strip.

The Kfir infantry brigade battalion, largely comprised of ultra-Orthodox nationalists, has been involved in controversies in the past connected to right-wing extremism and violence against Palestinians, notably including the 2022 death of Omar As’ad, a 78-year-old Palestinian-American who died after being detained, handcuffed, blindfolded and later abandoned in near-freezing conditions by soldiers of the battalion.

Following this incident and other reports of alleged abuse Palestinians suffered at the hands of the battalion’s soldiers, the IDF decided to move the unit out of the West Bank in December 2022 so the troops would no longer be in contact with Palestinians.

“A lot of us probably did not see Arabs, Palestinians in particular, as someone with rights – okay, like they’re really the occupier of some of the land and they need to be moved,” the former Netzah Yehuda soldier tells CNN.

In April, the US State Department determined that the unit committed gross human rights abuses against Palestinians in the West Bank before the war in Gaza, though it stopped short of cutting funding to the unit over the allegations.

Source: TOI